


Finally.

by anotherjadedwriter



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Bathing, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Pale Romance, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10369074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherjadedwriter/pseuds/anotherjadedwriter
Summary: It's been so long since you've been able to just take care of him. You know he needs it, but you can't seem to make it happen. You're always leaning on him, your poor Kurloz.





	

You wake up sweaty and sick to your stomach. This isn’t something you’re not used to, though. Your head is pounding. That’s normal. The thud at the back of your skull, resounding rough through the tips of your horns is so constant you’d probably feel worse without it.

Maybe not.

The thing that’s different about this evening is that you can’t breathe. You feel air go into your mouth, down your throat, into your lungs, feel it reverse in hot air poured out in gasps that make this horrible gulping noise. You see your chest moving up, down, up, down. Your eyes sting. Your legs are tingling and your ears are ringing over the cacophony of your screaming breaths.

Sitting up takes work, and as soon as you do you’re scrambling off the pile of blankets you know you shouldn’t sleep on and into the bathroom. You cough up whatever was in your stomach, some soda and a bite of a sandwich Kurloz shoved at you before he left this morning, and it splatters on the floor. You shudder.

The universe is so loud. Every creature dies and everything is so loud when it does, every timeline cohabiting this horrible after-space where you can’t even rest once you’re dead, and it’s loud. You feel dizzy with the noise and you feel yourself croaking words through your crowded mouth and against the static fog curling over every important memory and leaving you unable to remember the last joke Kurloz told you or the first time Latula held your hand but perfectly aware of how many stitches exactly closed your friend’s mouth for good and what colors Latula thinks are unlucky for shoes.

“Kurloz,” You choke on more vomit. He’s in his hive, probably taking a shower or sitting around, chatting with Meulin like he does. “Fuckin’, hurts.”

You’re slurring words and it makes you seem drunk. You feel like you’re too far gone, and there’s no air and you’re breathing too fast, your lungs hurt and your head is spinning and you can’t remember how fast you’re supposed to count to calm down.

Now that your stomach is empty, you struggle up to your feet and to the sink. Your hands shake as you wash your face, and you avoid looking in the mirror. You had it covered but it makes Latula sad when you say you can’t stand seeing yourself. You can, really, but when you’re like this you look like someone else and the chance of seeing a stranger is too high for you.

The universes are screaming and you want to die but you’re dead already.

Kurloz would curl his arm over your shoulders and let you fall against him and wouldn’t even complain if you puked again, he’d just pat your back and smooth his hands through your hair and make you breathe and his eyes would be a little watery and he always smiles now but he’d look scared and sad and so, so scared. He always looks scared when you’re like this. He said that before you burnt out, you got like this a lot and he doesn’t know what comes next but he’s sure it won’t be good.

The door is open before you and you realize that you’re not even wearing shoes, halfway through the threshold barefoot. It’s hard to focus but you make yourself put shoes on, jamming your feet into your boots and leaving them unbuckled. This new world that you’re on has an easier sun but it’s still too bright for you to like and it looks like it’s barely gone down. You don’t see anyone wandering as you stumble out of your hive, through the overgrown lawn, out the gate that broke off when you did a trick you forgot you did, onto the sidewalk with old chalk drawings Latula’s dancestor did with her, down the road, down the road.

How far away is Kurloz? You blink as the question fills your head, blocking any answer with wondering the exact distance, how many steps, what direction, where are you even going. The other timelines of you are loud and they’re all in your head and you can’t handle it. You retch, and they shut up for a minute while you try to remember what hive Kurloz is in.

Four doors? Five? Maybe. You blink away tears and wipe your mouth, count your teeth with your tongue, tell yourself heel-toe heel-toe heel-toe as you walk towards his hive from memory, the hive with the garden full of wildflowers and catnip that Meulin planted because he’s too gloomy otherwise.

The door is hard under your palm and you wonder at how cold it is. Is it cold outside? You feel yourself iterated many times and only some of them are cold, so maybe it is. You feel yourself iterated many times and you can’t breathe when you do and you’re banging on the door and almost hit your moirail in the face when he swings the door open, surprise turning to concern to scared and smiling.

He’s already pulling you forward, wrapping himself around you like he can keep you protected from the other yous if he does that, and you mumble into his collarbone. “Kurloz, its, hurts. Hurts.” You hate not being able to categorize your thoughts but he knows you and he doesn’t tell you to clarify, he just pulls you to the couch and lays you down with your head in his lap.

Kurloz’s hands press against the sides of your head, mapping the bone around your ears and following the lank hair at your temple in, towards your horns, pressing hard enough to ache in the spaces between each set. The pounding stops for an instant and you gasp, eyes shutting, shooting open.

“There’s a lot of me in my head and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, Kurloz, I’m not here but I’m everywhere else.” You sob, tears rolling into your ears. “I’m everywhere but I’m nowhere and everything is dying and there’s so many of me.”

You miss his voice, even though you can’t remember what he sounded like. He just looks at you, that permanent smile on his face making you shiver under his gaze until you have to blink. He keeps pressing and rubbing at your head, and even though the thudding that only started when you died stops, your body still twitches, like your pan wants you to rip out of his hands and get away from him. An iteration of you struggles against his hold and it makes your legs kick.

When you open your eyes he’s moving, standing and walking somewhere else, and the thudding gets worse all over again. The light in his windows is fading and you can see now, in a brief second of clarity, that he’s only half-dressed, his shirt on backwards and slime still clinging to his hair. He doesn’t have to sleep, but he likes to. His face is painted and you want to wash his hair for him.

He spins around quickly, holding restraints in either hand but looking shocked. You watch his hands and struggle through the parts of the dictionary you remember to read what he’s signing. His hands are so slim and pretty. Even slimmer after he stopped being able to eat solid foods.

“What do you want me to do?” He asks, eyebrows tight together in concern.

You must have spoken. You sit up, vertigo threatening your empty stomach and making you see double for a second, but he’s still there and it makes your pan relax again, seeing him, the matted mess of his hair and his paint and the tag sticking out the front of a shirt you’ve been missing for a perigee. “I want to wash your hair.” You slur, gripping the couch, but you feel solid. It feels better to say these things to him, to ask him to please, please just let you care for him again. Like you used to, when you weren’t burnt out and he wasn’t losing himself to his religion. “I want to take care of you. Please. I can, I just, I need to go slow but I can do it. Please. Kurloz, I, Loz, I, I.” You lose the coherency as tears pour down your cheeks, sobs strangling your voice.

“Tuna.” You see his hands and he’s there, kneeling to look up at you. “Let’s go. Let’s take a bath. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.” He looks so scared and you remember when he’d curl against you sobbing and shaking and needy and you could soothe him and you grab his face, gently. “Tuna.”

His forehead is greasy from his paint, but you kiss it, pulling his head up under your chin and purring as well as you can, petting his back and sighing, feeling so much better when he clings to you, that same desperation shaking through him. He needs you, he needs this, his arms tight and his breath uneven and you want to pick him up but you can’t anymore so you just slide onto the floor with him, holding him tight to yourself. He feels good against your chest. He feels real, you feel better, you kiss his horn and he whines some wordless complaint and you find yourself standing, pulling him with you.

There are tears on his cheeks and you push him into the pile he still keeps in the corner, crawl over him to kiss his face again, sitting on his waist and feeling him leech warmth away from your body. You lay against his chest, hands on his face, and he whines, clinging to you and sobbing these heaving, rattling sobs that make you ache in your chest. You sit up and kiss his throat, his chin, his eyelids, and he breathes sharply through his nose.

You know already that you can’t talk yet. Your pan isn’t going to let you. So you don’t, you just pet him and breathe and purr and soon enough he relaxes, still holding onto you, his pretty eyes closing and his chest lifting in calm breaths. You can’t pick him up anymore but he follows you when you stand, walking down his hall to his bathroom, and when you start the water (still shaking but less, less) he pulls his shirt over his head.

He jumps when you help it over his horns, but smiles, his eyes glittering indigo in pleasure as you help each other undress. He helps you over the side of the tub, carefully setting you back, but you don’t feel bad about it. You just lay in the water and hold your arms out and kiss between his horns when he crawls onto your chest, purring low and soft and he’s so pretty.

“You’re so pretty.” You coo, running a hand over his back. He shifts and you nearly snap that he needs to relax, but he’s just handing you the washcloth and soap. “Oh, right. Just, lay on me. Keep still.”

Kurloz stretches out luxuriously against you, his purr deepening as his eyes drift shut. He’s never been heavy, always alarmingly slight for a highblood, and now when you roll him over to wash his face and chest you remember when you’d fling him over your shoulder and carry him, laughing and screeching, off to a pile. The paint washes off easily, just with a little bit of rubbing, and then you rub your cheek against his and it’s perfect, exactly what you want. You should wash yourself, but instead you shakily cup water over his hair until he dunks his head for you, and then you’re washing it and he’s leaning on you like he always used to and he’s so cool and he’s calm and you feel like you can breathe for the first time in what feels like sweeps.

Only when he’s clean and fussing over you do you stop papping him, because he likes being able to take care of you. He’s the needier one, in the pale sense, but he can do this, he can clear your pan, he can breathe against your throat and hold you and match your pulse to his with his chest against yours and your pusher going overboard until it doesn’t, until you’re just sitting in a tub with him and he’s washing your hair and you’re fading fast.

After all the time you’ve known him, you can’t even feign embarrassment when he washes your sheathe, and he doesn’t linger, anyway, just moves to your legs and finishes you up and you’re clean and the water is getting cold. You stand with his help and rinse off and then you’re bundled in a towel and dragged to his block and pressed into a pile and you feel yourself falling asleep.

Finally.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think Kurloz is a really needy pale partner and was super dependent before Mituna got burnt out but isn't gonna just drop him, so this is like, them both realizing that there are still ways to make it "normal" for them both. idk it was super self-indulgent lmao..  
> if you enjoyed this, consider tipping me here: https://ko-fi.com/A781PZJ


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